1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for filleting fish bodies (rumps), particularly fish with a short-grown abdominal cavity or an abdominal cavity which has been shortened to a small residue or completely removed by corresponding cutting action during decapitating, with pairs each of revolvingly driven abdomen or belly filleting knives and back filleting knives, as well as belly and back guides, respectively, which guide pairs arranged in the planes of the knife pairs and leave between each other a gap for the passage of the belly or back spokes, on the one hand, and among a lateral gap, on the other.
2. Prior Art
German Patent No. 23 50 561 discloses an apparatus for filleting flat fish, in which the processing takes place when the fish pass tools arranged along a vertical path. In this apparatus, conveying disks are arranged downstream of opposing filleting knives and convey the fish bodies, by intruding into the belly and back filleting cuts made and engaging the flanks of the belly and back spokes.
This design was based on a development forming the subject matter of DE-OS No. 22 21 269 and aiming at providing an inexpensive apparatus, in which the conveying of the fish firstly was left to gravity and then additionally to the friction torque between the fish and the filleting knives, and in which it was attempted to make do with a simple, additional auxiliary conveyor engaging on the outside of the fish. As it was soon found, this concept could not be realized, because the accelerating energy imparted to the fish by the filleting knives was not sufficient to complete the filleting process.
The stimulation to this procedure resulted from British Patent No. 597 235, which discloses a conveying means provided in a filleting machine and which comprises a pair of conveying disks facing a belly filleting means and whose task it is to speed up again a fish briefly prevented from forward movement by a hook-shaped knife at the tail end when, following the separation of the fillets in the tail area, said hooked-shaped knife is moved out of the fish path. For this purpose the conveying disks inserted in the already produced back filleting cuts are designed to grip on their periphery and inner flanks. As tests have shown, this does not permit a reliable advance of the fish.